Best in Fiction
You may be shocked — perhaps even find it sacrilegious — that we’d name a paperback original as the year’s best novel, but at BOOKGASM, that’s how we roll. And so it goes with Max Allan Collins’ THE FIRST QUARRY. Perhaps the best offering yet from Hard Case Crime, it’s the novel that thrilled me to the bone (I leave it you to guess which one) like no other in 2008. Of all the authors I read regularly, here’s the guy who deserves to be selling 10 times whatever he does now.
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1. SMALL CRIMES by Dave Zeltserman – Nothing like the bleakest ending of the year to top my list of great crime reads. This book is one gut punch after another and never lets up, which is why I’ve got nothing but high hopes for what Zeltserman comes up with next.
2. CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith – A book that started off the year really strong for crime fiction, this is definitely the one title that crosses genre lines with its literate tale of a Russian serial killer and the system that tries to stop him.
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One supposes it was inevitable that James Bond be spun into the world of newspaper comics, as he was for nearly 30 years in England. That doesn’t mean it worked for all that time, as JAMES BOND: POLESTAR — the latest collection of these strips — shows.
POLESTAR is comprised of five original story arcs, all consecutive and from the 1980s. The first installment continues the proud 007 tradition of odd titles by being called “Flittermouse,” and it pits literature and film’s favorite superspy against a horde of vampire bats in a spooky old castle.
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A sampling of some of the bizarro search terms with (thankfully) low numbers that brought people to BOOKGASM over the last 30ish days:
• head in a vagina
• werewolf porn
• evil big breasted women
• gas mask blow job
• how to get fast excited
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As tends to happen annually, there are tons of reads I’m eagerly anticipating as the new year creeps toward our door. These may be the nine I most look forward to, but they’re certainly among the most notable, presented in chronological order.
STEPHEN KING GOES TO THE MOVIES by Stephen King — As has been made clear on this site time and time again, Stephen King movies are a guilty pleasure of ours, even when they’re not so hot. This paperback original collects five of the stories — “1408″ and “Children of the Corn” included — with King himself discussing each in new introductions. His essays are always entertaining. Jan. 20
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